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(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) Senator Jeff Flake, accompanied by his wife, Cheryl, leaves the Capitol on October 24 after announcing he won't seek re-election. F or progressives and liberals, it is tempting to eye the current discord and disarray in the Republican Party with a sense of amusement, if not outright glee. But the current trend of divisive loyalty tests for national political candidates poses a grave danger to the nation, especially when imposed by an ally of an authoritarian administration that regularly demonstrates contempt for the institutions and norms of representative democracy. Senator Jeff Flake was never much for Donald Trump. Flake, a libertarian, didn’t support Trump’s presidential bid, and has been a constant critic of the president since from the administration’s outset, even writing a book about how Trump is destroying conservatism (a phenomenon we noted during the primary campaign). Steve Bannon, the propagandist and former White House strategist turned...

(AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin) Steve Bannon speaks at a campaign rally on October 17, 2017, for Arizona Senate candidate Kelli Ward, who is running against incumbent Republican Senator Jeff Flake in the 2018 primary. I t is always tempting to dismiss the importance of America’s far right to the nation’s political trajectory, given the torrent of absurd and frankly false claims of its proponents, whether regarding the birth certificate of a president or the meaning of the Constitution. But around the world, the far right is on the rise, infecting nearly every Western democracy, and ours is hardly immune. Witness the election of Donald J. Trump, which most progressives and liberals had deemed impossible. After spending a weekend at the Values Voter Summit, an annual conference hosted by the political arm of the Family Research Council, I fear that same denial remains strong, even in the Age of Trump. Were there ever a doubt that the Christian right, as represented by the Family Research...

(AP Photo/Steve Helber) White nationalist demonstrators walk in Charlottesville, Virginia, August 12, 2017. A t several events at this year’s New Yorker Festival, a sense of wooziness predominated among audience members, who appeared to be grasping for a wisp of hope that the nightmare known as President Trump would soon be over. Alas, experts who graced the stages at three separate events had a common message: Expect Trump to serve out his first term, and perhaps even his second. The liberals of New York City struggled to comprehend how this could be possible. These are the same people who were certain that Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 presidential race. These are people who knew Donald Trump as the tabloid clown who had plagued them for decades, his smug mug sneering from the newsstand. They never dreamed that America would go for putting the clown prince from Queens in the White House. Having failed to consider the lessons of Reconstruction, they couldn’t believe that America...

(Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP) Pro-Confederate flag and gun supporters rally in Stone Mountain, Georgia, on August 1, 2015. I n the aftermath of Sunday’s attack by a gunman on a country music concert in Las Vegas, the National Rifle Association fell silent. According to police, Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and wounded more than 500 before dying at his own hand as a SWAT team bore down on the room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino from which he targeted his victims. As the scale of mass shootings in the United States has risen, a pattern has taken shape: the death of dozens in a single assault by heavily armed assailants, followed by days or weeks of silence from leaders of the organization that bills itself as “America's longest-standing civil rights organization.” The “civil right” to which the NRA commits itself of course is not the right of non-aggressors to live unaccosted by bullets, but rather the right to bear arms, which it claims precludes all...

(Kay Nietfeld/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images) Nigel Farage and Beatrix von Storch at a press conference in Berlin on September 8, 2017 I n Germany, the baseball cap is not a common sight. So when Beatrix von Storch, a leading voice of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), donned a red one, the sight turned some heads, especially because of its similarities to President Donald J. Trump’s signature campaign cap. But instead of the inscription “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” von Storch’s read “ MAKE GERMANY SAFE AGAIN .” On September 24, AfD became the first far-right party to win seats in the Bundestag since World War II, and the third-largest party in the nation’s parliament. While it’s true that far-right political parties in Europe long pre-date Trump’s presidential campaign (see Jean-Marie Le Pen , who founded France’s Front National in 1972), European politicians with xenophobic, racist, and/or misogynist views are finding inspiration in the 45th president of the United States. Nigel...